Wrestling with God, a Theological Protest.

Gary Cohen

I’ve never wrestled, but I’ve watched a match. The back and forth of trying to subdue your opponent can equal the mental struggle of life's challenges.

How do I deal with this Lord?

Show me. Teach me.

And then?

You don’t hear an answer, or at least you think you don’t hear.

Or perhaps you don’t hear what you are looking for.

Struggling and wrestling require effort and energy. It's like putting your foot on the gas pedal. However, the ability to listen and be patient is just as important. These two opposing forces need to converge with God's help to find peace and the answers one is searching for. Only a relationship with the Lord Almighty can provide that peace.

In 2022, I sat in a class with Rabbi Joshua Brumbach, a Messianic Rabbi from CT. The class title was Theological Protest in The Bible and Protest Theology. So interested was I, that I continued a virtual class with him on this subject.

What is Theological Protest, or sometimes called Protest Theology?

It has been described as an attempt to make sense of human suffering. Quite a timely subject. How do we as believers make sense of the suffering we have seen in Israel, among our Jewish people, the ongoing suffering we see around the world, and also our own lives? If you are suffering, I pray this brings some comfort to you.

The late Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks argues:

“In Judaism, faith is a revolutionary gesture,”and protest lies at the very core of biblical faith . It was in the voice of social protest that the divine biblical imagination took shape. Being created in the image of God requires the person of faith to respond to injustice. God wants and expects us to respond. In the Abrahamic narrative, and particularly in Genesis 18, Abraham is taught how to be a father and what it means to raise a child.

For Sacks: To be a father implies that the bible is to teach a child to question, challenge, confront & dispute. 

God invites Abraham to do these things because He wants him to be the parent of a nation that will ALSO do these things. He does not want the people of the covenant to accept the veils and injustices of the world as His Will.

He wants them to hear the cry of the oppressed, the pain of the afflicted and the lament of the lonely. He wants them not to accept the world that is, because it is not the world that ought to be. 

Jacob Wrestles Genesis 32:24-30

Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he had not prevailed against Jacob, The man touched the socket of Jacob’s hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was dislocated while he wrestled with him. 

Then The man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” So The man said to Jacob. What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”  Then The man said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have wrestled with God and with men, and have prevailed.” 

And Jacob asked The man, “Please tell me your name.” But The man said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And The man blessed Jacob there. 30 So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.”

Please forgive my editing, I have changed some of the actual names to make it easier to follow.

Wow, Let that settle in for a moment. Jacob struggles with a man. A man who purposely injures and hurts Jacob, but Jacob does not relent or give up. When it is over, Jacob says I have seen God, face to face and I have lived. God changes Jacob's name to Israel, "one who struggles with God and prevails". 

He prevails! As my wife has said in her testimony, Yeshua said to her

"It’s all true, It all really happened."

As the people of Israel, both natural and grafted in branches, we are part of this rich olive tree that carries what I would call, the struggle DNA by its very name- Israel. Through this DNA we are called and expected to struggle and wrestle with God.

When we argue and struggle with our Sovereign and Holy God, we are not blaspheming him. We are growing closer to Him.

What have you struggled with lately? A relationship, a child, a career, a decision, a loss? My wife and I struggle with many things. Perhaps that’s why this passage is so meaningful and yet so comforting to us.

Struggling is not fun. It’s exhausting. Just as the physical effort of wrestling is exhausting so is the mental effort of wrestling with something and it’s painful. Perhaps that’s why God dislocated Jacob's hip. 

I want to encourage you not to shy away from arguing or wrestling with God. In fact, the more you do so, the closer you’ll come to him. And the best part is that you don’t have to do it alone. You have a community of prayer warriors, and brothers and sisters in the Lord that will help you with your struggle. Don’t go at it alone. This is why God has given us spiritual family, mishpochah.

 "We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." Romans 5:3-5

Gary Cohen is a husband, father and grandfather. He is a Jewish believer who came to know the Lord beginning with his wife's beautiful testimony. He spends his time lobbying for better recycling laws and is a seasoned teacher of the Word.